A Funny Thing Happened ...

... On The Way To The Capitol.We were without phone or Internet service in the Capitol pressroom this morning, which accounts
for out tardiness on this Primary Tuesday.Unbeknownst to us, the state House (which is, believe or not, actually off today due to the election) was having some work done on its phone lines. Equally unbeknownst to us, the phone and data lines in the Capitol pressroom are somehow tied into the House's telecommunications system in a conglomeration that would even give Rube Goldberg some pause. Thus, the phones and modems of dozens of the state's news organizations were dead as a doornail while technicians gradually replaced the hamsters that apparently power the whole kit and kaboodle. We should probably add here that no advance notice was given us of a potential outage -- which was annoying as all get out.The phones blackout led, as you might expect, to much wailing and gnashing of teeth from ink-stained wretches who were denied access to e-mail, voicemail, and, more, critically, the previous evening's soccer news.On the other hand, we did use the downtime get a jump on a James Thurber book given to us by the ever-thoughtful R.B. Swift of the Times-Shamrock Newspapers, so that's gotta count for something.We'll return tomorrow with election results, gossip and the usual dose of innuendo that you've come to expect.